Talons
by midnightzengarden
Summary: After the events on Omega it was clear that Garrus was suffering. So Kelly decided to offer him the one thing that she could. The one thing that she had been wanting to offer him for some time. Now she realizes that what he needs more than anything is Shepard. Whether Shepard realizes it...or not. Mass Effect 2. Kelly Chambers/ Garrus Vakarian/ Fem!Shepard. Hurt/Comfort/ Kink/


**A/N: I've always wondered what would happen if Kelly's desire to help ever drifted more towards the realm of the carnal and the profane. I've seen a few kink memes with this request so, allons-y.**

Yeoman Kelly Chambers walked out on to the port observation deck and immediately took in Garrus' large still form. It was evident from his posturing that he was still wallowing in something deep and unpleasant, his hands flexing open and then closed again as he worked out the arthritis that she believed to be slowly taking root in the base of his long taloned fingers. This was something he seemed to be doing more and more idly as of late, his weight shifting from one digitigrade stance to another as he watched the whole of space refract and redshift outside the gravitational pull of Illium.

She had had to admit to herself that she was beginning to become seriously concerned about him. The possibility that she had come to see him out of more than just a little bit of general professional empathy had also forced itself in as a nagging mental side note, but for the moment she was still acting well within her parameters as the ship counselor. Mostly.

"Beautiful isn't it?" Kelly crossed her arms and moved to lean against the lip of the bar, an empty bottle of cheap distilled Omegan brewed rum a clear indicator that all was not well in the very singular world of Garrus Vakarian. "The first time I ever watched a vessel vent their drive core from space, I remember thinking it looked like an old abstract earth painting. Do turians like to paint? I just realized that I don't know."

Garrus regarded her with something racially akin to levity, at least that was what she had inferred from his expression. He had spent so many years intermingling with the different citadel races via C-SEC he had long ago adopted several mannerisms and speech patterns that were no longer typical to his kind. Her xenological expertise became less and less useful once that happened. The more affectations an alien picked up from the other species, the more difficult they became to read. In this Garrus was no exception, but at least there were a few things that seemed to remain rather consistent: this turian had a very quick wit and an extremely laid back sense of humor. She had really come to enjoy those things about him.

"We do paint," he admitted easily enough, his approach greatly emphasized by the sway of his broad six foot frame and his short leisurely gait, "but it's bad. Very bad. Unless you enjoy post apocalyptic watercolors. We corner the market on post apocalyptic watercolors."

"Is that your way of telling me that you may have some rather aggressive looking finger paintings back at your bunk that I may need to come by and analyze later?"

He shook his head and raised his top lip, slightly. It was a smile by his standards, though admittedly not so much by anyone else's. "I have a lot of pent up hostility, Kelly. Everyone needs an outlet." He turned his head askew and feigned reproach. "Now you're judging me..."

She spun the empty shot glass in front of her, watched it for a second, then flipped it mid-twist and slammed it face down, giving him a slight smile as she glanced up at him through long copper bangs and lofty amounts of guile. "If I stopped judging you, I'd be out of a job."

"Hm. I always assumed I was more of a hobby. Am I a job now?"

"You're definitely getting there." She slid on to a stool and put her hands in-between her knees, her green eyes squinting up at him with what she hoped to be stern chastisement. "You haven't come by to see me lately. You're supposed to, you know. Doctor's orders."

"Right," he shifted uncomfortably and scratched absently at the back of his neck. "I've been meaning to. Things have just been- there's been a lot going on."

"Mmhmm."

She was quick to admit that he was rather attractive for his species. Even with the facial scarring that now comprised a rather large portion of his right maxilla, he would have had little issue securing a life mate back on his own native Palaven. She thought in another lifetime that settling down with a family might have suited him quite well. Even though he was as military bred as they could come, he still had a very calming and paternal aura. Freudian psychology would most likely say that she just had rampant father issues. She had never been a fan of Freud...

"I'm sorry, Kelly." His voice startled her slightly, and she blushed when she realized that she had just suddenly loaned a great deal of mental space to trying to remember a rather nifty trick one particular turian had showed her when, 'tending the fringe.' "But can this wait? I have to go over firing algorithms that make EDI's source code look like a pyjak wrote it."

There was an uneasy edge to his voice. Something subtle and strained. Something she should have noticed before, but had managed to ignore. His demeanor, his energy, his entire form- it all seemed different somehow. Unusual. Whatever it was he was trying to hide, it was becoming more and more difficult for him to do so the longer she remained in the room.

As she stood up she touched his shoulder lightly, encouraging him to remain, "Hey, don't wander off on me quite yet. Just give me another couple of more minutes, OK?"

When she managed to search out his eyes, she tried to keep her reaction subtle. His pupils were dilated, glassy and slightly blue rimmed. He was pale, fatigued, malnourished. Everything was there. THIS was why he had been avoiding her. She had suspected a definite reluctance to speak, but she hadn't realized he was deteriorating quite like this. The stress, the regret, everything else that he had been feeling, was all slowly eating away at him. And she had left him alone to do it. Her only real reason for being on-board the Normandy was to prevent things like this, and she was failing miserably.

"How long have you been using it?" she asked, gently. "I understand. I'm not judging you. Just tell me, how long?"

When he remained mute for a time, she felt a sudden urge to shake him. "Garrus, HOW LONG?"

"A couple of weeks. Maybe longer."

She nodded and licked her lips, swallowing past the guilt she felt at not having caught this sooner. "Look, I know you blame yourself for what happened out there, but It's not your fault. You have to stop punishing yourself. How long has it been since you've eaten or had more than a couple of hours of sleep? I'm worried about you."

When he did not offer a response, she sighed audibly. "As it stands I cannot recommend that you remain on active duty. I'm afraid that you're going to get yourself killed."

"You mean like I got all of my men killed on Omega? That's occurred to me."

"It's OCCURRED to you?" She tried to regain her professional neutrality, but found it harder than she would have liked. "Is that why you agreed to work with Cerberus? You thought death by a collector would be a better way to go? Why not surrender on Omega if you were just going to give up, now?"

"Believe me, Kelly, I tried."

She stopped short. She had expected anger, or at least a vague sort of annoyance, but all he had given her was pain. And there was lots of it.

"You tried?"

"I was running low on ammunition. I knew I couldn't hold them off for very much longer, so I popped the heat sink and waited for them to come. They had been throwing everything that they had had at me for days. It seemed fitting that the AI that finally got to take me out would look like Shepard."

"You thought she was an AI?"

"I thought she was an AI."

There was a sentiment to his voice that suddenly struck her. Buried in the hatred, and all of the self loathing, there was a small kernel of warmth. Something soft and slightly preoccupied. He was in love with Shepard. Of course he was. But not even he seemed to fully realize it yet.

"Do you still want to die? There isn't anything, or anyone, worth living for?"

"I don't know."

She considered for a moment. Maybe now wouldn't be a completely inappropriate time to offer him the one thing that she could; the one thing that she had wanted to offer him for some time.

"Look, can we at least agree that your body weight in hanar toxins and illegal street Sting aren't the best way of dealing with this right now? Maybe there's something I could prescribe, or something I could... do."

A cue in her voice caused him to pause and he studied her intently for a moment. Though his body language remained mostly unchanged, his mandibles fluttered, slightly. She had embarrassed him, or at least made him incredibly nervous. "I appreciate the thought, Kelly, but really, I'm fine."

"No, you're not. I've seen fine and fine doesn't look like this. I know your people. I know their traditions. I can help you... If you'll let me."

She slowly placed her hand against the center of his chest and sought out his Akahnata chakra, sending a sense of warmth and understanding to mingle with his own energy there. In some turian spiritual practices this chakra was considered to be the center of all complex emotions, one where compassion, tenderness, and self preservation were housed. She sought those out now, a delicate tendril of light seeping in to even the darkest crevices. If she could help him to let go of those things that haunted him still, maybe it would be all he needed to move forward and to heal.

"Before joining Cerberus, I studied for a time with a Palavenian jorma named Shakti," she offered. " I have found nothing, before or since, that can quite compare to the release that can come from the practice of Ra-sha-ki."

Loosely translated in to English, she had found Ra-sha-ki to mean, "Sexual Healing." It had been sought after by turian soldiers since the beginning of their recorded history. Where some of them would intentionally lose themselves in physical training and drill exercises in order to relieve the tension typical of combat stress, countless others would seek out much more intimate pursuits. And for those pursuits there would always be jormas.

Through time immemorial, jormas had been considered everything from priestesses to courtesans. In truth some of them were probably little more than elevated prostitutes. But, as in most things, it often depended on who you asked. As a psychologist, she had seen nothing but beauty and empathy woven together to form the more spiritual and sexual elements of the role. For her, it was simply a matter of helping good men... hurting men. And Garrus was indeed a good man, even if he wasn't a particularly human one.

"I didn't know you had a thing for...vigilantes." His voice was so low that the translator within her inner-ear placed an odd reverberation around his words, muffling them, slightly. Even so, it had been incredibly obvious that he was teasing.

"Oh, I don't know, I've always enjoyed a man that knew when to take things in to his own hands."

As her energy roamed against his body, she slowly lifted her fingers to remove the visor he constantly hid behind. Inside, etched deep within the polymers, were the names of every squad mate that he had lost. She also noticed that he had left a space available for the traitor among them that had survived. No doubt he was still planning on reuniting them all very soon.

"Is this how you treat all of your patients?"

She smiled, aroused by the slight glint forming in the depths of his clear gray eyes. "Only the incredibly stubborn ones."

"Then you must have _really_ enjoyed Palaven."

In the default ambient lighting of the ship, their energies began to merge, mingle, entwine, and flex. As his talons fell to rest at the base of her hips, she tried to imbue him with her own burning inner light. She tried to give him a sense of promise and renewed hope. She tried to show him that no matter what else happened, she would always be there to help him see this thing with Sidonis, through. They all would.

II.

As she let her clothing slip to the floor, she told herself that all she had ever wanted was to help him, but when his claws started traveling slowly down along the bare expanse of her back, she knew that all she had ever really wanted was this; that all she had ever really wanted was _him_. Helping him out of his own uniform, she pushed it past his carapace, guiding him rather forcibly to the couch as his togs landed to join hers unceremoniously in the shadows. Straddling him, she was able to sink down on to the full hardened length of him, his presence within her an immediate source of a strong and formidable heat. She was already slick. Wet. Every part of her wishing to drive herself savagely against him until he knew what it was like to come inside the warm shuddering center of a writhing human woman.

Breathless, she tried to find her way back to the prayer that she had started, but his nails began to flex randomly against the sensitive skin at her thighs and she found the whole of it to be deliciously maddening. In order to concentrate on the rites at hand, she attempted to distance herself from the feel of him by reciting the turian names for sexual positions in her head. Originally, they had all seemed rather sultry, but upon their translations she had found them to be anything but.

 _"Lamp of life... Buttering the biscuit... The bathtub eel... The love box... The love rocket..."_

When he shifted beneath her and grazed his teeth against her shoulder, she tilted her head back and moaned. But it was when his mouth began tracing the gentle swell of her small upturned breasts that she finally started to surrender all pretenses of keeping it by the book. Ra-sha-ki had always been meant to be deeply intimate and spiritual, but it was never intended to be raw and overtly sexual; turians really did take the time to differentiate. But as she ground her hips against him, and felt his talons ravel into her hair, she realized that maybe what he really needed wasn't religious at all; maybe it was primitive, ancient and purely physical. And spirits be praised, she was completely OK with that.

Letting her fingers splay out against the angular spread of his horn crest, she stroked the full leaden length of it; brushing her lips along the rugged edges of the cybernetic scars that still ran alongside the steep peaks of his cheekbones. As she caressed him, his eyes fell closed and his jaw began to clench, his heartbeat increasing slightly as it began pulsing steadily against the delicate press of her breasts.

"Let go," she whispered beneath his ear, "I want to feel all of you."

The thick texture of his skin was rough and warm as he stood to pin her up against the large observation window; her ass forming a nice little pert heart shape as it pressed firmly against the cool contours of the glass. As her fingers dug in-between the scale plates that naturally coursed about the broad expanse of his shoulders, she linked her legs around his waist; the predatory cut of his teeth biting along the side of her neck as she whispered to him in his native tongue that it would be safe for him to finish inside of her.

"Kelly..."

Rubbing the tip of her nose against the sharp curve of his jawline, she gave him a confident smile. "I'm dextro-tolerant. You don't have to hold back with me. I have all the scars to prove it." Rotating her hips forward she began to slide herself against him, forcing him deeper inside of her until he bumped fully against the wall of her cervix. "If I'm lucky, maybe you'll even leave a few of your own..."

The noise that he made in response failed to translate, but when his mouth found hers he kissed her with a vigor that forced her to have to cling to him. With his nails following up along the curves of her side, she spread her hips wider for him, adjusting so he could keep the depth he needed in order to fill her completely.

As he buried his face against the flesh at her throat, she exposed her neck to him, his teeth sinking in to the base of her shoulder as he continued to drive himself in between the soft press of her thighs. She was chaffing, bruising, the scratches from the draw of his talons seeping against the pale complexion of her skin as she begged for him to take her faster. Harder.

As she ran her hands along the scutes at his back, she savored the welcomed press of him; lost in the rhythmic feel of his body as he moved steadily against her. Biting her lower lip, she allowed herself to begin to build around the hard solid push of him, inhaling sharply as she began to rock closer towards the edge.

"I'm about to come."

She could feel a stinging heat begin to form where he had just recently pierced the skin, his forehead pressing against hers as their eyes met. His were intense, passionate, and she could tell by the more sporadic nature of his own breathing that he was very close, himself.

"Come with me," she whispered, "I want to watch you when you come inside of me."

His English was limited, but what little bit he did know seemed to consist of a rather impressive list of eloquently strewn together curse words. When she felt him release, she screamed hoarsely around her own orgasm, writhing as a thin sheen of sweat glistened along the contours of her very small and compact little form. As she trembled past the brink, she noticed that all the colors of his crest had begun to mottle and shift, alternating between various shades of blues and grays as he allowed for her to slip down from him; her hands sliding along the full breadth of his arms as she placed a small kiss against the only part of his shoulder that she could reach.

"I should be concerned about you more often." Her voice was husky and sedate, her body already requesting that she make different life choices the next time she was starting to feel that particular brand of nurturing.

"Are you going to be alright?" He brushed his fingers tentatively against the lover's bite at the base of her her throat and she realized just how utterly gruesome it must appear nestled there against the fair contrast of her skin. Still, she was rather fond of it, though the other various scrapes and bruises would definitely serve as a constant reminder that turians were always going to be formidable paramours.

"Oh, it's nothing that a hot shower won't fix."

As she rested her forehead against his chest he hugged her to him, kissing the top of her head in a gesture of affection so genuine that it forced her to swallow hard. This was a learned behavior, definitely not something she was expecting, but it did serve as a painful reminder that she was never going to be able to do anything like this with him, again. Her job required that she maintain at least a modicum of professional detachment, and she was already becoming way too fond of him. In another time...in another place...maybe she could have at least allowed herself to think those words. But here and now, it was becoming more and more evident that he was ultimately intended for someone else. Someone one that had been harboring deep-seeded emotions for him for far longer than either of them would probably ever realize.

When Garrus had first been brought back aboard the ship, he had been more dead than alive. And Shepard, she had been covered in massive amounts of his blood. She had saved his life, but even as she had waited for him to re-emerge from post-op there had been a great deal of fear. And for a soldier of her caliber to show that sort of raw open emotion, it had to have been more than just a simple case of strong battlefield camaraderie. Shepard was in love with him. She was in love with him, and she was completely unsure of what to do about it.

"Do me a favor?" Kelly forced herself to pull away from him and sighed warily, touching the side of his face in an earnest attempt to convey just how very sincere she felt. "I know this might seem a bit random, but I have to go and...could you check on Shepard for me? She's been going through a lot. She won't talk to me but she seems to really trust you. I just-I just really want for you both to be OK. Would you mind? "

Garrus looked at her for a moment before nodding almost imperceptibly. "I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you."

It was only through pure resolve that she was able to walk away from him. Only through her oath to her particular chosen field that she was able to keep her eyes forward as she nonchalantly went to gather all of her things. Even the imprint of her own butt tried to mock her as it proudly advertised their transgressions from the dark reflective surface of the deck glass, but she mischievously decided to leave it there. She wanted it to serve as a temporary memento; a hidden token from a night that she would always be forced to keep as her dirty little secret. Besides, if it were ever discovered the crew could use a little intrigue.

Intrigue, like good sex, was always good for morale.


End file.
